GUEST POST: You’ve got (tortilla) mail: Inside an athletics department's inboxes

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It’s not all we do, but a lot of what we do here at EP is centered on open records requests, which allow us to inspect original documents, like coach contracts and financial reports. Open records also allow nosy reporters (or, you know, anybody) to also inspect emails of public employees.

That can be a useful tool… not as a gotcha, but as a way to illustrate exactly what somebody really does all day, or how employees respond to something in close to real time.

My colleague KC Smurthwaite has a story today on what we can learn from poking around administrator emails, from sandwich ordering to dealing with tortilla problems. I’ll turn the time over to him:

by KC Smurthwaite

You’ve got mail. 

If you’re over 35, that phrase probably triggers a nostalgic buzz — the sound of dial-up modem and the thrill of seeing a message pop up on screen.

But for athletic administrators and coaches, email isn’t nostalgia. It’s not always pleasant. In fact, it’s sometimes a daily gauntlet. Their jobs come with public scrutiny, and their address books are full of tens of thousands of fans. It’s a visual, volatile and vulnerable profession.

“We get hundreds of emails weekly with free advice,” one FBS athletic director told Extra Points. “We read the first few sentences, then either delete or forward them for a chuckle. We all need more humor in this industry.”

A former FCS AD agreed. “Even major donors attach plans to fix our programs,” he said. Most of the time, the attachments include rule-breaking — sometimes on purpose.”

[Editor’s Note: If you’re a major donor who has sketched out a plan to ‘fix’ your favorite program — even, or perhaps especially, if it includes cheating — feel free to CC us next time. [email protected]]

The industry's nuances are sky-high. As the former FCS AD, who now works in athletics at a Power 4 school, noted, “most [emailers] don’t realize their suggestions violate NCAA or even state education system rules.” The ideas keep coming, though — and not all of them are bad, just most. The most common fan suggestion usually involves schools sending free gear or other “impermissible benefits” to high school athletes. A close second: ideas that directly undercut the institution. “Fans often forget there’s an educational portion to their student-athlete experience,” one administrator said.

Inbox management in college sports is both a survival skill and a spectator sport. At UMass Lowell, there was a lively back-and-forth about how to name a new licensed product — a not at all uncommon exchange. At Western Illinois, administrators had to solve the mystery of how many sandwiches to order for a meeting.

But sometimes, the emails are just downright funny, as was the case at Texas Tech this fall. In October, amid pressure from opposing schools and Big 12 officials, university leadership denounced the Red Raiders’ long-standing tortilla-tossing tradition, turning athletic director Kirby Hocutt’s inbox into a case study in chaos. 

Fans in Lubbock have been throwing tortillas onto the field mid-game — and generating pushback from opponents — for years, but thanks to new rules about foreign objects being tossed onto the field of play, the carb-launching now has consequences. And the issue peaked during an Oct. 11 win over Kansas, when Tech was hit with two penalties for flying tortillas. After the game, the teams’ coaches had a brief, heated exchange over the unusual projectiles.

A FOIA request gave Extra Points a unique look into Hocutt’s email history (and other tortilla-related notes across university administration), which yielded a remarkably on-brand showcase of problems far less existential than choosing corn or flour.